“Marcia, Jesus was a Jew; he came for the Jewish people. He came for you.” Those words were spoken to my mother by my friend’s mother when I was nine years old, and while they made a distinct impression on me, it wasn’t until sixteen years later that I considered them in a personal way….

I was raised in a Jewish, Bible-believing home. Both of my Jewish parents instilled something in me since childhood: the message of Jesus as messiah. Being Messianic is as much a part of my legacy as my Jewish heritage.

I was born into a middle class, Jewish American family, which would have made me a “princess” except that my father was a florist, not a doctor. We celebrated almost all the traditional Jewish holidays in a superficial way. While I was taught there was a God, I never really knew him.

When I was eight years old I was bitten on my face by a German Shepherd. This changed my life forever. We had just moved to a new neighborhood when the accident took place. There had been no chance for me to make friends.

It took one hundred stitches to close the wound. When I returned to school my classmates gave me a new name. They called me “Scarface”. From then until I turned twenty-seven I allowed that name to mold me and make me what I was.

My parents, who are originally from Detroit, Michigan, found the Messiah through the “Jesus Movement” in the early seventy’s. When I was around twelve, we began going to a Messianic congregation to learn more about our Jewish roots. About a year later, I carried on an old family tradition by having a bar mitzvah. My Haftorah portion was Isaiah 1:18, “though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow.” It was only years later that the true meaning of these words changed my life.